Thursday, May 4th 2006
Summer Reading List
The university just released their Summer Reading List for incoming freshmen. The theme is “Books for Future Presidents.” Among the listed are The World Is Flat by Thomas Friedman, Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky, and How to Lie with Statistics by Darrell Huff.
This wasn’t their original plan, however:
This year, Tollefson and Dupuis had originally aimed for a counterpoint to the National Conservative Weekly’s list of the “Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries,” which had included “The Feminine Mystique,” “Silent Spring” and Darwin’s “Origin of the Species.”
But the theme became too complicated - should it be “Best Books,” “Beneficial Books” or “Importantly Good Books“? They couldn’t decide. And so they drew their inspiration from UC Berkeley astrophysicist Richard Muller’s “Physics for Future Presidents,” which covers physical concepts that Muller considers necessary prerequisites for living in today’s complex world.
They couldn’t do it, so maybe we can. What are some “Importantly Good Books” that we all simply must read?
Free to Choose by Milton Friedman
The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
Watchmen by Alan Moore
oh, and Harry Potter. serious.
Comment by patr — 5/4/2006 @ 12:32 am
Human Accomplishment, by Richard Murray, is a book I can’t recommend highly enough.
Comment by Morbo — 5/4/2006 @ 12:47 am
As is The Western Canon by Harold Bloom. And, if you happen to love Shakespeare, his criticism “Hamlet: Poem Unlimited” is genius and can be read in one sitting.
Comment by Morbo — 5/4/2006 @ 12:48 am
I am a fan of “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie.” I think it is the ultimate libertarian book and is probably more Shakespearean than Shakespeare himself. Serial.
Comment by The Captain — 5/4/2006 @ 1:09 am
Is that Huff book as good as it sounds?
Comment by Beetle — 5/4/2006 @ 8:32 am
The Bible. It’s a bestseller, and I heard it has a few good messages.
Comment by A Quinio — 5/4/2006 @ 8:47 am
“The Bible. It’s a bestseller, and I heard it has a few good messages.”
Too much gore and fantasy for my taste. I prefer character-driven fiction.
Comment by Donald — 5/4/2006 @ 8:59 am
Human Accomplishments- C. Murray
The Blank Slate- S. Pinkerton
Paved With Good Intentions- J. Taylor
Comment by Fabian — 5/4/2006 @ 9:13 am
“Too much gore and fantasy for my taste. I prefer character-driven fiction.”
Speaking of fiction, any good socialist books recently?
Comment by HB — 5/4/2006 @ 11:26 am
Morbo, his name is Charles Murray. Maybe you were thinking Richard Herrnstein? Murray and Herrnstein wrote The Bell Curve.
Comment by Fabian — 5/4/2006 @ 11:42 am
I always mess his name up. I don’t know why I do that. Great book, though.
Comment by Morbo — 5/4/2006 @ 12:01 pm
I must disagree with whomever decided that putting Ayn Rand on your list was a good idea. Her ideas are nothing that a free-market capitalist doesn’t already believe, and you have to wade through 700+ pages of terse, lifeless prose and shitty characters just to get that bland message hammered into your frontal lobe. If you want some exciting conservative-themed literature go for Robert Heinlin instead. Besides, it’s summer, you should be rotting your brain on sci-fi anyway.
Also voting for Howard Zinn’s “People’s History” if you haven’t already read it. If you can read all the way through it and disagree with it, so much the better, but, liberal or conservative, no viewpoint should stand untested. Even I pick up an Ann Coulter book every now and again when I need to giggle and be reminded of how my godless liberal self will burn in Hell.
Comment by John W. — 5/4/2006 @ 3:47 pm
Though I’ve never read and have no intention of reading Howard Zinn, I agree with John W regarding Ayn Rand’s literary failure. There seems to be a fad for “objectivism” going on here (in my view, just one step — and not a very long one — from Larouche-type loonyness). For the rest of you, I’d suggest reading good books. Off the top of my head, two excellent works of fiction available in translation:
i) Vasily Grossman, “Life and Fate”: Very similar in style and thematic to Solzhenitzyn. Grossman, a frontline reporter for Pravda during the War, chronicles the experiences of a large number of characters during and immediately following the Battle of Stalingrad — in other words, at the very moment that the Great Patriotic War gave way to business as usual in Stalin’s USSR. The book has just been reissued.
ii) Gert Ledig, “The Stalin Front”. This time, a German in translation and, this time, the Battle of Leningrad. Both books were gifts so the apparent obssession with the events of 1942-43 is purely coincidental. A vigorously modernist account by a Wehrmacht veteran of the first signs of collapse on the Eastern Front (nb: I have my doubts about the translation though: the German title is “Die Stalinorgel” and I can think of no reason why this was not literally rendered in the English title as “The Stalin Organ” given that, in both cases, it is a current term for the red army’s truck-mounted rocket launcher.)
Importantly Good Books? I wouldn’t go so far. I have trouble imagining by what criteria such a choice would be made in the first place. Rephrase the question as “Literature you wish first-year undergraduates were forced to read as part of a larger enterprise of indoctrination” and perhaps you’ll get more interesting responses…
Comment by do — 5/4/2006 @ 4:17 pm
Dude. The Fountainhead rocks. Read it thrice already… Atlas Shrugged… well I’ve been trying to finish that one for years.
Have to agree on Heinlein though. Philip K. Dick is great too.
Comment by patr — 5/4/2006 @ 5:12 pm
Then this would be a wonderful occasion for you to broaden your horizons, Patrick.
Comment by do — 5/4/2006 @ 5:57 pm
The Holy Bible is the only book these freshmen will ever benefit from. Thank you.
Comment by Yuriy Pasko — 5/4/2006 @ 6:11 pm
If my summer goes as planned, I’ll be spending most of my reading time on computer programming books… However, I’ve been interested in some popular science type topics recently. I’m really interested in reading Ray Kurzweil’s new book about the technological “Singularity” (I’m currently in the middle of one of his earlier books). I want to read Liberation Biology, a pro-biotech book from Ronald Bailey of Reason magazine. I also want to read some cognitive science and psychology stuff by Steven Pinker and Steven Johnson.
Besides that, I want to read some more of the classic graphic novels out there (starting with Alan Moore and Frank Miller) and keep up with some of the comic series that I follow (Y: The Last Man, Ex-Machina, and a couple others). Gotta have my monthly dose of magazines too: Wired & Reason especially.
Comment by patr — 5/4/2006 @ 6:43 pm
If you disapprove of reading hundreds of pages of terse, lifeless prose and shitty characters just to get a bland message hammered into your frontal lobe, I fail to see how you can recommend Zinn.
Comment by Beetle — 5/4/2006 @ 6:50 pm
New Russia
Comment by Anonymous — 5/4/2006 @ 9:22 pm
Pat, I, like Morbo, misspelled an author’s name. I suggest you read Steven Pinker’s “The Blank Slate.” It’s an excellent book.
Comment by Fabian — 5/4/2006 @ 10:09 pm
I’ve read those three that you specifically reference. I don’t think most freshmen would actually “get” them. A little knowledge without context is a dangerous thing….
Comment by Nathan — 5/10/2006 @ 8:29 pm